The designer translates the needs of a user to a product or service that fits with the current place, time and social/cultural surroundings of that user. During this process a lot of different aspects are important and it is up to the designer to make the right choices with the knowledge he has at that moment.In the current system it is all about costs, esthetics and performance, there is no eye for the total picture. “Because the economy put no price tag on resource drawdown’s or on pollution, it gave no incentive to extract sustainably, process cleanly or optimize use.”[1] “What if industries were forced to cover the full environmental costs of their activities up front instead of leaving the bill for the public to pay? It would be expensive, and in this new schema of pricing green manufacturing would actually be cheaper.”[2]Luckily, Fourteen years after Janine Benyus wrote her book “Biomimicry”, Puma changed this issue and did put a price tag on the environment.

Being an eco-effective designer means you do focus on the total package. Some questions can be; What are the goals and possible effects, direct and far-reaching? Of which total system, which culture, commercial and ecological system is this ‘thing’, and the way we use it, going to be a part? Does this product or service answer the needs of all the stakeholders? Do we use our resources effective and efficient?To really work with integrated eco-effectiveness it is important the whole company is willing to change their mindset. As I am going to write from the perspective of designing there are a few aspects that I will not explain explicitly, however they are worth mentioning as they are important for making a company integrated eco-effective:

Energy usage; coming from the sun(wind, water and biomass are also driven from the sun.)

Transparancy in communication

Fair working circumstances

Transport of resources, products and services.

In the blog articles of the coming months I am going to write about different actions a designer can take to become an eco-effective designer.